The pressure is building in Brooklyn, where a record payroll was supposed to result in a juggernaut of a squad.

Instead the Nets stumble into Toronto at 3-10 heading into Tuesday’s tilt with a Raptors team that leads the division for the first time since 2006-07, when the then-New Jersey Nets upset the favoured Raptors in the playoffs.

Forget the pre-season title talk, just getting to the playoffs now will be a challenge for the Nets. It likely will take at least 36 wins and that would entail a 33-36 finish from here, doable, considering the talent on hand, but said talent has to be in the lineup for it to happen.

Deron Williams and Brook Lopez, the inside-out, vital franchise cogs, both didn’t make the trip to Toronto. Andrei Kirilenko and Jason Terry are doubtful and Shaun Livingston questionable.

Rookie head coach Jason Kidd, the future Hall of Fame point guard, is getting the brunt of the criticism for the putrid start even though Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, who will join him one day in Springfield, have looked slow and shaky at times as they try to adjust to their new digs.

While Brooklyn has many doubters, don’t count Dwane Casey or Rudy Gay among them.

Casey goes way back with Kidd, he coached Gary Payton for years in Seattle (Payton was one of Kidd’s mentors growing up playing the game in their native Oakland) and later, they won a title together with the Dallas Mavericks.

Casey blames all of the injuries and the change of scenery for Garnett and Pierce for Brooklyn’s early stumbles.

“Believe me, Brooklyn’s going to be OK. They’re going to bounce back. I don’t see anything that has anything to do with coaching. It’s just injuries right now, guys learning to play with each other, it’s only 13 games into the season,” Casey said after practice Monday.

“I just hope they don’t get it together (Tuesday). They’re a dangerous team, they have veterans who have won multiple championships so you can’t sneeze at that. Everyone’s overreacting and coaching is the easiest target you can throw stuff at. It’s not coaching, Jason will be OK.”

For proof, Casey pointed to Larry Bird’s first season as a head coach in Indiana. The living legend helmed the Pacers to a 2-6 start, before Indiana emerged as a contender, as expected.

“Same thing, veteran team, high expectations and they struggled right out of the gate,” Casey said.

Casey also coached Garnett in Minnesota and knows he is a creature of habit like few others in the league. This has been a major change for Garnett and it’s going to take some time.

Casey said Kidd is smart enough and has been around long enough to know: “The NBA is about ups and downs (and) adversity is a huge part of it.”

His advice to Kidd: “You don’t read the newspapers, you don’t read the Twitter, blogs, all that stuff, you don’t watch television. You coach your team day-by-day, that’s the hardest thing you do as a coach,” he said.

Still, knowing Kidd the way he does, Casey is well aware how the bad start must be affecting him.

“Jason’s been a winner everywhere he’s been. Jersey, with us in Dallas. The only thing he knows is winning, so that’s probably as tough on him as anything.”

Casey said that he doesn’t buy into the theory that Brooklyn is old and slow and added Toronto wouldn’t try to push the pace excessively to try to take advantage of all of the old legs.

“We’ve got to play our game, we can’t go crazy and try to do some things we aren’t comfortable doing. I don’t think they have creaky legs, they have talent, they have (just had) some injuries,” Casey said.

Gay scoffed at the idea that the Nets might have been overrated coming into the season.

“We know they’re good. They’ve got five, six all-stars on the team. Of course they’re good, they just haven’t picked it up yet.”

But are the players shocked at all by how poorly things have gone there so far?

“I’m not surprised by anything in this league, anything can happen,” Gay said.

“They’ve started slow, but I know they’ll pick it up. We’ve just got to take care of them before they do.”

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Raptors not writing off slow-starting Nets

The pressure is building in Brooklyn, where a record payroll was supposed to result in a juggernaut of a squad.

Instead the Nets stumble into Toronto at 3-10 heading into Tuesday’s tilt with a Raptors team that leads the division for the first time since 2006-07, when the then-New Jersey Nets upset the favoured Raptors in the playoffs.

Forget the pre-season title talk, just getting to the playoffs now will be a challenge for the Nets. It likely will take at least 36 wins and that would entail a 33-36 finish from here, doable, considering the talent on hand, but said talent has to be in the lineup for it to happen.

Deron Williams and Brook Lopez, the inside-out, vital franchise cogs, both didn’t make the trip to Toronto. Andrei Kirilenko and Jason Terry are doubtful and Shaun Livingston questionable.